I like the basic wushu movements now more than ever, for two reasons.

1. I’m so out of it now, I can’t remember an entire form, so its all I can do.
2. If you can do basics well, then all of the rest comes a lot easier. Its something we should always work on.

What I also like are little combination, you know, not a full section, but just a short string of punches, kicks, and stances. I’ve always been very self-conscious about my ability to pick up new forms and movements, where I’ve seen people (Mark for example) learn a new form in 1 hour and repeat it. I can’t, and the few times I’ve tried my brain and body become so exhausted I probably couldn’t remember my own name, let along a series of complex movement with a fighting application. So, little combo’s work for me, it lets me work on my muscle memory, and it doesn’t burn me out.

I’m just very happy that while Mark is back teaching, we’ll have to oppertunity to work on that stuff on a more regular basis.

I help up pretty good tonight, and I got though all the jumps too, and I sure miss doing all of those. Once Mark asked people to break into groups, Patti asked if I wanted to box with her and James. Well of course!

James alternated between the two of us, going through some simple drills and then “sprints”, which tired both of us out. Patti joked around and said she liked how good I looked in the pink gloves. Look… those gloves stick out like a sore thumb in the bin, and I couldn’t find any other 12oz gloves. I should bring mine from home when I come on Thursdays, cause they’re super manly! They have curse words on them, and their all black, shit, they even have chest hair on them! And Tattoo’s! Yeah, they’d make those pink gloves squeel and run away… but they would totally be intrigued cause they are so bad ass.

Okay, enough of that. We did that until 9 or so. It may not be obvious, but both the trainer (James) and the participant (Me) get a great workout, its really hard holding those target pads and time everything. James is always a great sport with me.

When it was about 9:15 I had to cut out. Mark was still drilling everyone pretty hard (CMAT is coming up again) so I said goodnight and came home to blog, and eat a potato!

I was thinking Monday night about how I don’t have that persistent aching feeling, and how walking is just that, walking with out a limp. Today is the end of that; my hamstrings are sore, my hip flexors are sore, my back is sore. All of them in a good way and not in the scary injured way. My flexibility has gone down hill, and going to class once a week will not be sufficient to gain it back. I’ll have to work on that more during the week.

Before class started, James wanted to start off with some boxing. We did that for an exhausting 5 minutes, and tiring as it was it was still a lot of fun. The warmup was simple and I was glad we only jogged for 10 minutes. I can sort of jog for lets say a half an hour on my own, but their pace is faster and when you start throwing in jumps, cart wheels, high knee’s, etc… it really saps what stamina I have. Next was a set of brutal sprints (with a medicine ball), jump rope (150), push-ups (I did 20), squats with a medicine ball and a little hop.

After a quick water break it was on to stretching, then warmup kicks/basics. By this time, my tendons/muscles on the outside of my hips were cramping up, so most of the stretching became difficult and the outside kicks became a little harder. We then ran through all the jumping kicks and that was great. Lynda stressed that I should take a break, and I did after all that, I was pretty happy to get back to it again. I sat out during the forms and watched James and Josh spar. They went at for a while, it was very interesting to watch and very impressive how Josh uses Bagua effectively in a fight. It was a little unbalanced, Josh is slightly taller than me and has about 50lbs on James.

Great class, can’t wait till next Tuesday.